A clear brand identity style guide is key for any company. It’s every employee’s go-to document when it comes to telling the company story to clients, colleagues and potential customers.

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How clear brand guidelines save time and money

How clear brand guidelines save time and money

 

A clear brand identity style guide is key for any company. It’s every employee’s go-to document when it comes to telling the company story to clients, colleagues and potential customers.

 

If you don’t yet have a style guide in place, these questions might sting: How do you make sure freelancers and contractors create the same kind of materials as company employees? Does maintaining consistency take up a huge amount of your time? Are you constantly negotiating with printers, contractors and other outside vendors about what they’ve produced, trying to explain why it “just doesn’t look right”?

 

You get the idea. The good news is, solving all these problems is a matter of creating and distributing one all-encompassing guide.

… creating and agreeing on a company-wide brand identity style guide will take time and energy, but the payoff is well worth it.

Style guide essentials

 

Brand identity style guides don’t need to be complicated. Often they come together as a simple PDF document with instructions and usage examples. Larger companies will of course need longer, more detailed guides to fully outline all brand elements and their various applications. For smaller companies, a simple one-page guide on logos and other key points may be enough. Here are the essentials to cover:

  1. Logo use. At minimum, your company should outline all the ways your logo can be used. This includes primary and secondary logos along with their colour formats in Pantone, CMYK (for print), RGB (for screens), and hex codes (for web). This information helps designers, web developers and printers maintain a consistent look across mediums. You should also cover appropriate sizing (minimum size and size in relation to other elements), placement, spacing and examples of what not to do.
  1. Colour use. Alongside your logo, your company likely uses a set of colours to tell its story. But did you know that creating the same colour set across different printers and devices requires different values and settings? Letting software do the work for you can be dangerous – make sure you specify values for Pantone, CMYK, RGB and hex, or risk mismatched colours representing your brand.
  1. Typefaces and fonts. We know typefaces and fonts come in various weights and styles and that they can be manipulated in different ways (e.g. uppercase/lowercase, bold, italics, with glyphs or without). Defining which typefaces are acceptable and how they can be used – in everything from logos to Word documents – is another way to control and refine the overall look of your collateral.
  1. Use of photos. The photography you use in print and online is another reflection of your brand. Specific styles evoke certain responses and people will quickly recognise an off-brand photo in a brochure or banner ad. Guidelines on the kinds of photos that meet the mark are obviously essential for photographers, but also help those putting together presentations or even mock-ups for internal discussion.

It goes without saying that creating and agreeing on a company-wide brand identity style guide will take time and energy, but the payoff is well worth it. Clear guidelines ensure visuals and messaging are consistent across all platforms. They also make decision-making quick and easy and tell a stronger story to anyone who encounters your brand.

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Written By: Rob